LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Confusing the metric for the meaning: Perhaps correlated attributes are ‘natural’” by NickyP


Listen Later

Epistemic status: possibly trivial, but I hadn't heard it before.

TL;DR: What I thought of as a "flaw" in PCA—its inability to isolate pure metrics—might actually be a feature that aligns with our cognitive processes. We often think in terms of composite concepts (e.g., "Age + correlated attributes") rather than pure metrics, and this composite thinking might be more natural and efficient

Introduction

I recently found myself describing Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and pondering its potential drawbacks. However, upon further reflection, I'm reconsidering whether what I initially viewed as a limitation might actually be a feature. This led me to think about how our minds — and, potentially, language models — might naturally encode information using correlated attributes.

An important aspect of this idea is the potential conflation between the metric we use to measure something and the actual concept we're thinking about. For instance, when we think about [...]

---

Outline:

(00:35) Introduction

(01:51) 1 - Age and Associated Attributes in Children

(03:52) 2 - Price and Quality of Goods

(04:38) 3 - Size and Weight of Objects

(05:30) Implications for Information Encoding

(06:27) Rethinking PCA and Dimensional Reduction

---

First published:

July 23rd, 2024

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EJFvitiQXmLHXgtom/confusing-the-metric-for-the-meaning-perhaps-correlated

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

LessWrong (30+ Karma)By LessWrong


More shows like LessWrong (30+ Karma)

View all
Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

Making Sense with Sam Harris

26,420 Listeners

Conversations with Tyler by Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Conversations with Tyler

2,387 Listeners

The Peter Attia Drive by Peter Attia, MD

The Peter Attia Drive

7,893 Listeners

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas by Sean Carroll | Wondery

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

4,126 Listeners

ManifoldOne by Steve Hsu

ManifoldOne

87 Listeners

Your Undivided Attention by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, The Center for Humane Technology

Your Undivided Attention

1,458 Listeners

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

9,040 Listeners

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) by Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

87 Listeners

Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Podcast

390 Listeners

Hard Fork by The New York Times

Hard Fork

5,431 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,216 Listeners

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis by PHD Ventures

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

474 Listeners

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups by Conviction

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

121 Listeners

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast by swyx + Alessio

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

75 Listeners

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley by BG2Pod

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

459 Listeners